Fmr Lt. Robert M. Jacobs Who Captured UFO On Film Takes AARO To Task

Messing With an American Hero

"I will not, however stand-by and let them defame and slander an American hero, fighter pilot, test pilot, photo interpreter, then-Major Florenze J. Mansmann, later Stanford Research Fellow, Doctor Florenze J, Mansmann, PhD. ..."

Dr. Bob Jacobs has asked me to forward this statement to members of AARO, past and present. It is also being sent to other interested parties, including prominent journalists, and will be posted at The UFO Chronicles website–Robert Hastings My name is Robert M. “Bob” Jacobs, PhD. I am Full Professor Emeritus in Communication at Bradley University located in Peoria, Illinois.

By Robert Jacobs 8-1-2025

Among many other things before this, I was First Lieutenant Robert M Jacobs, Officer in Charge of the Photo-Optical Instrumentation Section of the 1369th Photographic Squadron at Vandenberg Air Force Base. My section of 135 NCOs and Airmen provided high-speed motion picture coverage of every single ICBM launched down the Western Test Range from about 30 cameras located on and around the launch pad, as well four-to-six high-speed, long focal length lensed cameras mounted on trackers from three different locations around the pad.

During my three-and-one-half-year tenure there I became extremely well adept at analyzing thousands of feet of film showing up close and personal views of missiles launching and flying off to wherever. I’ve attached a copy of one of my Officer Efficiency Reports (OERs) to demonstrate the confidence my superior officers had in my performance of duties. I was also awarded The Air Force Guided Missile Badge for “Making a significant contribution to America’s Missile and Space Program.” I wrote a report entitled, “Deliberate Deception: A Critical Analysis of the Curious Events at Vandenberg Air Force Base in September, 1964.” It was published in The MUTUAL UFO Journal, Number 249, January 1989.

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I wrote that piece to clarify and specify what had been reported first in 1982 in a badly butchered version of my statement in the National Enquirer rag. That article had stimulated a flurry of calls and letters from “researchers” around the country. I stand behind the UFO Journal piece.

In short, many know that I reported having been in-charge of a new tracking site that I made near Anderson Peak at Big Sur, California. Corporate engineers from aerospace companies, the builders of the missiles, wanted to know if we could provide tracking coverage showing missile in flight downrange from a side view. I found such a site and began showing coverage that delighted those engineers.

One day I got a call from Major Florenze J. Mansmann, chief photo analyst in the Office of the Chief Scientist at the First Strategic Aerospace Division Headquarters on base. I had worked with Major Mansmann a number of times on other projects. He informed me that a new device for tracking missiles was being flown out from Cape Canaveral to our Big Sur site. I was dispatched to meet what was the Boston University Telescope and its creator Doctor Walt Manning.

My team and I did so, helped install the impressive scope on site and a day or two later, we captured on film a UFO firing four beams of light and disabling one of our dummy nuclear reentry vehicles in near-space on a trajectory to Eniwetok Lagoon. “Deliberate Deception” provides details of that event.

Some years later now, I received a note from a friend showing me that Wikipedia has published a factoid that Big Sur was all a mistake and that I had simply misinterpreted what I saw, even after analyzing hundreds of other film images of missiles in flight, and that my account—after numerous retellings by me in writing, in podcasts, TV series, a motion picture, and personal testimonies including to AARO—has been dismissed by that august body as my having mistaken what I saw as chaff and a few decoys of ours. This conclusion, reached by the then-AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick, is based on an article from the “esteemed” publication, Skeptical Enquirer, authored by the late Kingston A. George.

He was a civilian analyst who did, in fact, participate in bringing the BU Telescope to Vandenberg. He was on the site when the tool arrived, and we had pictures taken together to prove it. I never saw him again after that day, but I did read a report he issued after the experiments with it were over. In response to my MUFON article, he was solicited by the guy who ran Skeptical Enquirer to rebut me. George did so by testifying that he knew of an ‘anomaly’ on one Atlas launch code named, “Buzzing Bee” and that it involved some “chaff” and the releases of “decoys” and that he saw this film “a couple of weeks after the launch” and I believe him. However, “Buzzing Bee” was NOT the event that I filmed.

Mine, on 15 September 1964 was code named, “Butterfly Net” and my account of the UFO event in it has been verified by Major Mansmann and others who have actually seen the film image, including Lue Elizondo.

George’s testimony that he saw my film a couple of weeks later has been proven not to be true. And that is simply because, as Major Mansmann testified in writing, that film was snipped from the reel with a pair of scissors and taken back East that very day by the CIA. That film was never at Vandenberg after that day so, as Lt. Colonel Tim Phillips of AARO has falsely reported, they could not have recently gone back to Vandenberg, recovered the original 35mm and 45mm original film and verified George’s account. Well, there never was any 45mm film, and there was no 35mm or 16mm film left at Vandenberg for Tim or Sean to have looked at.

Period. They lied.

So, I am now relegated to the scrapheap of morons reporting on UFOs. Another victim of the ongoing, orchestrated campaign of propaganda and disinformation from our own government.

Tim and Sean may not have seen my film images. But other contemporaries have. It still exists, as Lue assured me.

My train is nearing the end of its long run sooner than I would have liked. At that moment of checking-out I would like to know that someone finally cleans out the barrel at AARO, DoD and the rest, and that full disclosure comes to the land. Asked by someone recently if I believed in UFOs. I said, “Certainly not. I believe in many things because I can’t know them based on lack of evidence. I do KNOW things though, and that transcends believing in them. I know, full-well that UFOs are real. They have been here a long time. I also know I filmed one committing what would have been an act of war by any terrestrial adversary.

And revealing that one event has cost me my honor, reputation, a couple of teaching jobs, an explosion in my mailbox, evil phone calls in the night and brooding anger at the pinheads who slander, defame, belittle, and deride anyone who makes them quiver in their cubbyholes by challenging their paradigm.

I will not, however stand-by and let them defame and slander an American hero, fighter pilot, test pilot, photo interpreter, then-Major Florenze J. Mansmann, later Stanford Research Fellow, Doctor Florenze J, Mansmann, PhD who examined my film frame-by-frame with a jewelers loupe and described in writing, in detail, the flying saucer-shaped UFO with a dome on top moving into position to fire beams of light four times, striking the reentry vehicle.

Damn you Sean Kirkpatrick, damn you Timmy Phillips you cowardly scum. I knew him well. You bozos did not. How dare you dismiss his verification of my account based on a mistake made by Kingston George. I can only hope that the preponderance of evidence catches up with you one day and proves “what fools you mortals be.”

See Also:

	Officer Who Filmed UFO Downing Missile Sets the Record Straight
	Big Sur UFO Film: Government Whistleblower Reveals He Watched It
	Mansmann Letters

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